The Shipwreck: An Official Minecraft Novel

by C. B. Lee

  “Yeah! We did it! We finished the maze,” Tank announces, his triumphant heart pounding in his veins.

  “You did it,” Emily says, grinning at him. “We couldn’t have done this without you.”

  Tank looks back at the maze. Now it’s just a sheer mass of green again, hiding the complicated tangle of hedges and flowers inside. It was more complex than anything Tank’s ever built. And he solved it. He got them through it.

  Jake claps him on the back, and Emily throws her hands up in the air, delighted, and Tank can’t help but smile back. He’s not used to this at all, the unabashed way they’re proud of him, celebrating their accomplishments together, but mostly celebrating him.

  Maybe he isn’t a nobody after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  EMILY

  Emily takes a selfie of the outfit she’s put together—a blue dress that makes her think of diamond armor shimmering protectively with enchantments. She plays with ideas for captions, wondering if she could make that Minecraft reference before remembering that she’s still grounded and she doesn’t have access to her social media accounts anymore, and phone calls and texts are only for family right now.

  She ties her hair up in a ponytail and hums to herself. It’s still early; Jake and Tank usually get to the center by ten, but she can get some mining done while waiting for them.

  Papa looks up at her from the dining table, sipping a cup of coffee and smiling at her. “You know, it’s been nice to see you take this community service seriously.”

  Emily shrugs. It has been nice, having something to focus on. And while she misses hanging out with Pattie and Nita, she’s also been really enjoying just spending time with the boys, playing Minecraft and solving the riddles.

  “I ran into Mrs. Jenkins yesterday, and she mentioned how smoothly the cleanup has been coming along. I thought since you’ve been doing well, we figured you would be responsible enough to have your social media things back.”

  Emily blinks. “Really?”

  He smiles at her and ruffles her hair. “Carmen said she changed the passwords to your things back to your original ones yesterday, so you can use them again. And here is the new Wi-Fi password as well for you. Consider yourself ungrounded. You’re still helping out at the center until the project is completed, of course—”

  “Are you serious?” Emily squeals in excitement. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! And of course I’m still going to help, I don’t start things I can’t finish, duh.” She gives him a tight hug before bouncing off back to her room.

  Emily wastes no time reinstalling all her favorite apps, logging in to all her accounts and immediately changing her passwords. She texts Pattie and Nita to let them know the good news, and then speeds through all her notifications, responding in a flurry. There’s Pattie and Nita in the group chat, responding to likes and comments on her posts, oh and Viv has been messaging her through YouTube, wondering where she’s been—

  Emily’s phone chimes with a flurry of texts, and suddenly her heart races with indecision.

  Pattie 9:46 a.m.: Mall today? Omg orange julius for lunch? To celebrate the end of an era?

  Nita 9:47 a.m.: Yeah! I’ve missed hanging out with you

  Emily 9:49 a.m.: Can’t. I still have community service

  Pattie 9:49 a.m.: Oh no! I thought you said you were ungrounded, free now!

  Emily 9:50 a.m.: I just got my Insta back. Can’t go out yet!

  Pattie 9:50 a.m.: Oh, step one, gotcha. Don’t worry, we’ll be here! And step one is great!!! Omg what do you think of this outfit?

  Emily types out a quick response; she’s missed this, too, the clever way colors and patterns can come together. Part of her feels guilty about the lie—she probably could go out, if she asked her parents, but today they have big plans in the server, and she doesn’t quite want to explain to Pattie that she’s just busy instead.

  * * *

  —

  The courtyard’s faded shrubberies look kind of nice today, Emily thinks, swinging her feet on the old bench. There are some small blooms struggling to sprout through the dirt. Have there always been flowers here? She never noticed this place much in front of the community center; she just thought it was an empty lot of trash. She thinks of the photos they boxed away, and the way this place used to shine with care, plants and flowers growing in abundance.

  “Hello there,” a voice says from behind her.

  Emily sits up a little taller when she spots Mrs. Jenkins walking through the double doors of the community center out to the courtyard. “Oh hey,” she says, looking up from her phone. “We were just taking a lunch break.”

  Even though Mrs. Jenkins hasn’t been enforcing a set start and finish time, they’ve just ended up meeting at ten every morning, cleaning until lunch, and then playing Minecraft until late afternoon. Sometimes they’ll bring leftovers from home and share, sometimes they’ll wander down the block and get tacos together.

  Today Emily’s been catching up with her friends after being away for so long; the boys are supposed to be on their way back with lunch.

  “That’s good,” Mrs. Jenkins says with a smile. “The cleanup looks like it’s been going well.”

  “Thanks!” Emily smiles. “You look nice today,” she adds.

  Mrs. Jenkins is wearing jeans and a T-shirt that reads PACIFIC CREST COMMUNITY CENTER BEACH CLEANUP DAY instead of her usual pajamas and bathrobe combo, and her salt-and-pepper hair is combed back into a loose bun.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Jenkins says. “It’s been nice to get out of the house.”

  Jake and Tank cross the street and join them in the courtyard, setting down greasy paper bags on the bench. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Jenkins,” Jake says.

  “You can call me Ellen,” Mrs. Jenkins—Ellen—says, her eyes twinkling. “Emily was just telling me about your progress before your lunch break. You know, you don’t have to worry about bothering me when you bring the boxes over to my apartment, you can just leave them at my door. I just wanted to stop by and say you’re doing a great job.”

  “Thanks,” Tank says, looking from Emily to Mrs. Jenkins, blinking slowly as if to ask Are we in trouble?

  Emily shrugs at him. It doesn’t seem like it.

  “Well, that was all! Enjoy your lunch,” Ellen says, getting up from the courtyard bench and going back inside the community center.

  “That was weird,” Jake says.

  “Probably just checking up on us. Good thing we have been cleaning every day,” Emily says. She jerks her head at the paper bags. “Did you get peppers?”

  Jake grins as he rips open the paper bag and pulls out Styrofoam boxes, handing them out. “Fish for you, carnitas for Tank, one of each for me,” he hums. “Oh, peppers.”

  “I got them,” Tank says, placing out little takeout cups of peppers, limes, and various salsas.

  “This place is amazing,” Jake says, biting into a taco. “I told my dad about it and he’s been getting a burrito there every day for lunch.”

  Tank places a whole pepper into his mouth, crunching noisily, his eyes crinkled up in amusement as Jake takes a tiny bite of his and winces.

  Emily squeezes lime onto her tacos and takes a bite, trying not to laugh as Jake says something incomprehensible with his mouth full, a string of onion dangling from his lip as he chews.

  “I said, do you need to get that? It’s been ringing for forever.”

  “What?”

  Jake jerks his head toward her phone. It’s buzzing on the bench next to them, Pattie’s face smirking from it.

  Emily blinks up at them, not even realizing she’d been getting a call. She’d been so caught up with eating and hanging out with Jake and Tank.

  “That’s Pattie, from school, right?” Tank asks, even though Emily’s sure he knows who she is.

  Emily wipes her hands hasti
ly on a napkin and declines the call. She texts Pattie quickly, Sorry, family stuff! Ttyl before grabbing her second taco. It’s not that she doesn’t want to see Pattie, but right now she’d rather be having tacos with the boys. Pattie knows she’s busy today anyway.

  “I’ll call her later,” Emily says.

  “Your phone is just going wild,” Jake says, peering at her screen. “Oh, what! You have a YouTube channel?” He grins at her. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be nosy. The notifications just kept popping up.”

  Emily finishes her taco and wipes her hands again before taking her phone. Sure enough, it’s another few likes on an old haul video.

  Pattie 12:42 P.M.

  No worries!!! Just wanted to share I shouted out your vid in my newest Makeup Monday Tips! Can’t wait to hang out with you soon!

  “Yeah, it’s like for clothes and makeup and stuff.” Emily sighs. “I mean, I love all of that, I just don’t really like making videos about it.” She pauses, thinking about her Minecraft channel. She’s never shown it to anyone, but maybe Jake and Tank would like it. “I also have a channel for some of my builds.”

  Emily offers her phone to the guys, her heart pounding nervously in her chest.

  “Oh whoa, this is so cool!” Jake says immediately. From the music it sounds like he’s watching one of her first videos where she made a simple vending machine tutorial.

  “The graphics look amazing. Which shaders did you add?” Tank says, awed.

  “The water looks so real!”

  “You really like it?” Emily asks, fiddling with a piece of her hair. “You don’t think it’s dumb?”

  Tank gives her a nod. “It’s great. It really shows, like, a lot of different ways to build cool things. I’ll have to watch some of these later.”

  Jake hands her phone back and Emily takes it with a relieved laugh. They like her Minecraft videos. They like this side of her.

  “Oh, now that you can text people and stuff let me add you so we can have an actual group chat finally. Tank barely texts me back.”

  “We see each other all the time. Stop sending me those weird cat photos.”

  “But they’re funny, right? You laughed?”

  Tank rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling throughout it.

  Emily suddenly feels strange, realizing that when summer ends and school starts again, she won’t be able to hang out like this anymore. It’ll be back to who she used to be, or, well, just a part of who she was. It’s not like she can talk about videogames with Pattie and Nita. But she wishes she didn’t have to have only one group of friends.

  * * *

  —

  They connect to the server, the world coming into focus around them where they left off at the end of the maze.

  Jake’s already talking about going back to the base and preparing more before they set out for the new coordinates, but the sight of something new in the distance stops them all short.

  Floating on an outstretch of sand in the water, directly across from where they’re standing, is the purple shimmer of a Nether portal.

  “Was that there before?” Tank asks.

  “I don’t think so,” Emily says.

  “You think the Wizard built it?” Jake swims out toward the portal. Emily follows, Tank right behind her.

  The Nether portal leads them to a platform of purple-red netherrack. Red clouds lurk above ominously, but the ground is even and uniform. Unlike the portals they’ve set up, carefully laying out torches across the uneven and unforgiving landscape, this is clear of mobs or lava or any natural obstacles of the Nether. Emily realizes they’re up in the air, and that she’s seen this before: shortcuts built high above the dangers of the mobs lurking on the ground below. The mottled blocks stretch out in a long path lined with a short cobblestone wall lit with torches as far as the eye can see.

  They follow the torch-lit path; in the distance Emily can see dozens more of the purple portals marked by signs. “I wonder where all of those go,” she says aloud.

  “Must be how the Wizard was setting up this whole world,” Jake muses.

  “But why show us this?” Jake asks.

  Emily thinks about the note the Wizard left for them at their base. “It must be a shortcut. The original riddles and everything are still here, but the Wizard must have made this recently.”

  Tank takes the lead, rushing ahead. It’s been nice to see him grow more and more confident since they’ve begun to play. “The Wizard said we had to solve seven riddles to find the ultimate treasure, but who knows how many the original game had.”

  “I bet he picked out the most challenging tasks for us to solve,” Jake says. “Or the ones that have been perfected. I mean, he spent so much time making this, he’s got to have some that are favorites. Or he made new ones. This must be so we’re skipping to the next challenge he wants us to focus on.”

  Emily grins, charging full speed ahead. “I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

  She’s curious to see where all these other portals go, but she stays focused and follows Tank down the path the Wizard laid out for them until they reach a portal sitting behind an elaborate polished stone archway.

  The portal spits them out in a badlands biome, cliffs of oranges and reds and golds rising up in tall crags. Scraggly dead bushes and cacti are scattered across the terracotta plateau, and ahead of them in the cliffside Emily can see an open cavern and a few broken pieces of minecart tracks. “A mineshaft?” she asks.

  “The portal did lead us directly here,” Jake says. “This must be where the Wizard placed the next clue. If the hedge maze was the third challenge, this must be the fourth.”

  Emily draws her sword. “Who’s up for a little mining?” she says, grinning with excitement.

  The cavern is filled with mobs, and Emily leads the way, charging through the creatures ruthlessly. She keeps cutting down spiders and destroying skeletons, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference, as more mobs spawn from the depths of the cavern.

  “What is this?” Emily scowls.

  “There’re too many of them!” Jake says frantically.

  “Aaaah!” Tank yells, running in a different direction. “I’m getting away!”

  “Must have been modded to keep spawning,” Emily says. “What kind of challenge is this!”

  “Maybe the point isn’t clearing out the cavern, because it’s impossible,” Tank says. “There are more here, too! No way!”

  Emily switches from her sword to her bow and aims at the skeletons shooting at Tank. “Like an endurance test? But for what?”

  “I see a chest all the way over there by you, Tank! Make a run for it!” Jake calls out.

  A chest! That must have the next clue.

  Emily ignores the damage she’s taking from the spiders closest to her and barrels right through them so she can have a better shot. Across the cavern, she sees Jake rushing to Tank’s side to fend off the skeletons approaching.

  “I got the book!” Tank shouts.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Emily calls out. “Come on!” She tosses an instant health potion at Tank and Jake as she fights off the rapidly multiplying mobs. She gulps one down herself, hoping it will be enough to make it out. Together, they fight their way through the twisting turns of the mineshaft caverns until they’re outside in the bright sunshine again.

  Emily exhales, catching her breath. “That was fun,” she says.

  “That was terrifying,” Tank says.

  “Is it a clue?” Jake asks.

  “Yeah. There’re coordinates and another riddle.” Tank reads the contents of the book aloud:

  RIDDLE THE FIFTH

  This challenge will surely test your mettle

  Cross the bridge of fiery doom

  By managing how a conduit settles.

  The path to the next challenge cour
age will show

  By going high to go low.

  * * *

  —

  The coordinates lead them to a plain rocky plateau. It looks like this area of the world is barren, just rock stretching out for forever.

  Something glints in the distance; it’s almost far enough for it to look like it’s floating above a hazy, impossible sea, but Emily knows better. She used to think everything in the distance was ocean until you get closer and realize it’s just too far away to see.

  “That must be it. There isn’t anything else around here,” Tank mutters.

  “It looks like a castle on top of a mountain,” Jake says with awe.

  “A castle we’re totally going to own! Let’s get this party started.” Emily charges forward, excited to take on whatever monsters may lurk within. Those skeletons in the maze had been fun, but she’s itching for a good fight.

  Shining obsidian takes the form of towers and spires, menacing in the distance. As they race ahead, a deep chasm comes into focus. The only clear way to the castle is a thin obsidian bridge one block wide, leading straight to the front door. The bridge looms at them menacingly as it juts out from the castle. Angry red lava flows in the chasm below, marking a swift and efficient death for anyone who missteps while crossing the bridge.

  There’s some sort of wall blocking the way to the bridge—a thick wall of cobblestone directly in front of the entrance at the cliff’s edge. Emily pulls out her diamond pickaxe and charges forward.

  “Take that!” she screams, slamming it into the wall.

  Her diamond pickaxe shatters with a dissonant clank.

  Emily huffs.

  “I knew it couldn’t be that easy,” Jake says. “The challenge must be getting inside.”

  “Could have told me that before I ruined my pickaxe,” Emily mutters. Looking closer, she can see some sort of glimmer of pink enchantment on the stone.

  “We’ll have to try another way,” Tank says. “It’ll be fine.”